


Already three parts dead

by NotAnymore



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2523968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAnymore/pseuds/NotAnymore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The Javert of five years ago would not have known the signs, though he now saw that he had surely encountered the dead on a daily basis. As a younger man, he had been more clinical about these matters: this man has no pulse - he is dead. This other man walks and talks, so we call him 'alive'. Five weeks at Rue Plumet had overturned this certainty, just as Jean Valjean's company had overturned so many in his life.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Recovering from his fall in Valjean's house, Javert begins to suspect that they may not both have survived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Already three parts dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



If Javert had been given to flights of melodrama or low-rent irony, he might have taken some grim amusement in his situation. To be perfectly healthy one morning; to be driven to the brink of suicide within the passing of a day; to be rescued from his own foolishness by the man who drove him to such lengths, and finally, after a slow and pained recovery, to find himself in the care of a man whom he strongly suspected of being secretly dead.

Perhaps this recognition was a sign of his transformation. The Javert of five years ago would not have known the signs, though he now saw that he had surely encountered the dead on a daily basis. As a younger man, he had been more clinical about these matters: this man has no pulse - he is dead. This other man walks and talks, so we call him 'alive'. Five weeks at Rue Plumet had overturned this certainty, just as Jean Valjean's company had overturned so many in his life.

Most days, in the absence of anything concrete, he concluded that he had spent too long in bed. Before his death, Valjean had installed Javert in a too-large room with a too-soft bed, furnished with dainty curiosities and more books than Javert required. For the first few months, he had sunk unresisting into the mattress, resigning himself to watching the light from the latticed window creep across the white ceiling. He spent weeks in silence with only his own uneasy thoughts and Valjean's quiet concern for company. 

That first convulsive week, when Javert lay sweating and fitful and barely conscious, Valjean would not leave his bedside. He woke more than once to find that Valjean had shifted from his seat in the night and now knelt before the bed, head bent in prayer, clutched hands outstretched across the linen bedspread. In the moonlight, neither of them moved, and if it were not for the occasional heave of Valjean's broad back, Javert might have guessed that Valjean were already dead; collapsed over his final act of martyrdom. He had thought, once to flatten his palm against the nape of Valjean's neck or clasp those exposed wrists. To tighten a hand and force the life from Valjean as Valjean had forced life back to him. Instead he had lain still, thoughts drowned to a merciful whisper beneath the thundering of his pulse.

His body had survived. The worst was healed, and Valjean's vigil became long afternoons, then dwindled into regular evening visits. Javert sank into the silence, glad of the peace. And when his soul failed to heal along with his arm and leg, he sank further. His mind moved more sluggishly than it once had. Decisions, which had once seemed inconsequential, became impossible. And finally he reached for the nearest of Valjean's books. Not out of any desire to read, but for fear that he might have lost what little of his sense remained, his mind loosened into a fearful sludge.

If nothing else, the sight of him propped up against the headboard, book in hand, had seemed to please Valjean, who fussed a little more than usual over the state of his pillows and the freshness of his linens, then offered more books. None of the choices appealed - books of prayer, frivolous romances, tales of the sea - but Javert accepted a random selection and stacked them at his bedside. And so he spent his days in the company of tormented heroines and brave, doomed souls, accompanied by the odd well-intentioned psalm for reassurance. 

Each evening Valjean would take a seat at his bedside and ask what he had read about that day. To which Javert could be relied upon to respond with a single word: nonsense. The books were nothing but hidebound nonsense. A waste of money and a waste of time. Valjean would respond with an infuriating smile and suggest another, equally inconsequential, book. Javert would huff and mutter at the suggestion before finding a grumbling way to accept the offer while denying any suggestion that he might in any way enjoy the things.

"And what have _you_ read today?" Javert asked one evening, feeling tetchy and exposed. Valjean had paled and dropped his gaze. 

"Things have been turbulent," he admitted, with a roll of his shoulders that suggested that _turbulent_ was an understatement. "I have not been able to pick up a book in some time." 

He avoided Javert’s eyes as he stood, finding a corner of the bedspread to smooth down while asking about any other needs Javert may have. Javert demurred, all too willing to let Valjean drive himself away, and was left to his own devices.

Had some part of Valjean already taken leave by then? Thinking back, Javert remembered less than he would have hoped - the way Valjean's hair had grown unruly; his unshaven face and the clothes had never quite seemed clean. He had kept his eyes averted much of the time, but for a few brief moments. And those moments had been welcome, undeniably welcome. Even weeks later Javert clearly remembered the unexpected warmth of a smile, the tingling tenderness of hands at his arms, shoulders and back. He had taken allowed Valjean to take him by an arm and help hoist him to his feet, kept him aloft during his first, tentative steps after so many sluggish weeks. Perhaps Valjean had not seemed fully alive, but he was far from dead.

The cane sat untouched in the corner of his room for weeks before Javert could bear to take hold of it. There was an indignity in the shining grain of the wood, a reminder that for as long as he leaned against it, he would be leaning on Valjean. He! Javert who had sneered at charity and those who accepted it, who had not gone more than three days without working since his first days as a guard, saddled with a permanent reminder of his debt. He had chosen to remain in the bed, but the bed was Valjean's. The books were Valjean's. The towering ceiling and iron latticed windows were Valjean's. He reasoned that the sooner he could walk unaided, the sooner he could begin to repay his debt. And so, with reluctance, he accepted the cane, judging it to be as much a consequence of his actions as the drag of his leg.

Like a criminal, he practised his art in secret, unwilling to be seen as he took each halting step, bearing the pain in silence when he rested too much weight on his damaged leg. He felt sure that Valjean would hear him - each clack of the cane against floor echoed sharply in his ears. But he was not interrupted, and so he struggled on. If Valjean noticed, in his evening visits, that the cane now stood propped against Javert's bedside, he said nothing.

Small steps grew longer. He counted the number he could manage, and tried to judge how many steps would be needed to reach the opposite end of the room. When the cane would support him the full distance, he made an attempt. It took more than one- three false starts, each one a humiliation. The fourth attempt carried him further, and by the fifth try he was shuddering with the effort. 

He sank, exhausted against the stone wall, and stood propped between the wall and his cane for some minutes, taking long and ragged breaths. It was not until his heart had stopped hammering that he recalled the lattice window. It was only a few paces away, and with a little effort, he was leaning against the windowsill and revisiting the world beyond the four walls of his room.

This was not Paris. Or rather, it was not the Paris he had learned with his eyes and nose and the soles of his feet. Jean Valjean had placed him in a room that overlooked a sprawling garden. Even from a distance, the sight was enough to unnerve. What remained of civilisation had been consumed: a marble statue of a young women had fallen to ruin. She stood, now, crumbled and moss-covered in the centre of the garden. At the far end, the bars of the locked gate were red with fresh rust and entangled by twisting vines. There seemed to have once been a garden path, now barely visible through the long weeds. And in a shaded corner of the garden, Javert observed Jean Valjean sitting on a stone bench, his bowed head buried in his hands.

Javert watched Valjean for a moment, transfixed by the man's stillness. He felt, as he watched, that he was transported closer to Valjean - that it might almost be possible for him to reach out and offer the man some comfort. Unlikely as it seemed, it almost seemed as though-

Valjean’s shoulders shifted unexpectedly and Javert startled. He wrenched back from the window and flattened his back against the wall, eyes darting wild and guilty. Spying, it seemed, was not an easy instinct to be rid of. His neck swelled hot and appalled at his own impertinence. How ungrateful must he have seemed if Valjean had seen him?

A further thought struck him, and it was not a pleasant one: how might he have _looked_ if Valjean had seen him?

There were no mirrors in the room, and he found himself unabashedly relieved, for all that it marked him as a coward. He could not bear the thought of the shrivelled thing he must have become after so long in bed. Valjean took care to regularly retie his bandages, help him to bathe and change his nightshirts, but the fear lurked in him that he was becoming a wild, lost thing. Had he been spied through the window? Did Valjean wish him hidden? Had he become a creature from a storybook - a madman locked away in an old house, neither fully himself nor the self he was intended to become.

He stood a little straighter at the thought, scoffing in a way that felt comfortingly familiar. "Come now," he muttered aloud. "You've spent too long in bed and read too many novels. Enough of this foolishness, let's try another length." And, as if spurred on by this, he pushed forward, making it back to the other side of the room with a little less trouble before pitching back into the bed, and into fitful sleep.

 

The days grew brighter after that. He left the stack of books alone, save for the Bible, which he still studied with a sense of begrudging obligation. And instead he concentrated on building his strength. He practised walking the perimeter of the room, counting each step and measuring his daily progress. He reached the small wardrobe and found it almost empty. On another day, he visited the dressing table on the far wall and spent an afternoon investigating the contents of its drawers. 

They were filled with the inconsequential things that find their way to spare room cabinet drawers: bits of string and measuring tape, pencils and small scissors and, to his surprise, a half-finished piece of needlework. Green and white threads had been cross-stitched together to form a bristling bush, dotted with white flowers. He turned it over in his hand, wondering, and pressed it between the pages of his Bible when he returned to the bed. 

Still, it was more than a week before he even attempted to reach the bedroom door. He made several trips over several days, first with trepidation and then with a desperate sense of purpose. The door had become a monolith, summoning him forward, taunting him with its distance, but threatening with the promise of more challenges beyond. Upon reaching it, he would turn, without touching the door itself, and return to the bed. It was not until he had completed seven trips - one for each day he made the attempt - that he was sure enough to lay a hand on the doorknob.

He was not proud of the surprise he felt when the knob turned easily and the door swung back beneath his hand. He he had not been confident the door would be unlocked, and the rush of clean air was shaming even as it cleansed him. How little he still thought of his strange host. He was abominable.

The corridor beyond the door was dim, with a damp smell that hit the back of Javert’s throat. The windows that should have welcomed in the sunshine were covered, allowing only glimpses of light through their shutters. Javert's slow footsteps echoed on the floorboards and he felt, somehow, as though he were an intruder. He drew himself up and took a few more steps. Two doors lined the corridor, and he knocked sharply on the first one. No response. He huffed and knocked again before setting his hand on the doorknob, fully prepared to apologise for his dishevelled state if necessary, only to find that the door was locked. He dropped his hand and stepped back from the door, surprised by his own disappointment.

What else should he have expected, after all? To invite a wounded wolf into one's house is a noble act. To welcome the beast and leave his cage unlocked is a kindness. To let the beast roam freely about the house and let him wander into one's own chamber if he pleases? An act of stupidity. Valjean had been a great many things, but he had never been stupid. Javert took a final look at the door, and pursed his lips. So be it, he thought. Let Valjean keep his secrets. It was a worthwhile thing for a spy to learn respect for privacy.

The wide stairs at the bottom of the corridor wound down in a half-circle, leading down to a large atrium with doors leading off in two directions. The door to the kitchen was open and so, determined not to be humiliated by another barrier, Javert stepped into the small, airy room. 

The kitchen was furnished with every daily necessity: the solid oak table soaked in the morning light, and seemed as though it might be warm to the touch. The siding was packed and prepared for service: a gleaming kettle stood at the ready, along with wooden spoons and pewter plates. It was less grand, perhaps, than Javert had expected, but welcoming for its simplicity. Unlike the upstairs corridor, the windows and doors were swung open. Javert was leaning against the doorjamb and enjoying the freshness of the air, Javert had half-hoped that he might find Valjean seated at a table or bent over the stove. No such luck. Valjean was nowhere to be seen. Only an elderly woman who stood watching him from the corner.

They stared at one another, and for a moment Javert could not confidently say which of them was more taken aback. Finally he mustered up something that might have resembled his old bark, and said, "You. What is your name?"

The woman peered at him, before stuttering out a reply. 

"What was that?" Javert demanded, and then, hearing his own frustration in his voice, he clenched his fists at his sides. "Tell me, please," he prompted again. And then, with an effort, "I will try harder to listen this time."

The woman repeated herself. And then again, and once more until they were certain they understood one another. She was Toussaint. Javert hmphed an acknowledgement, glancing down. And, doing so, he was visibly reminded of his unclothed and knobbled legs. The bad leg was out of its cast, but still tightly bandaged. He was grateful for the length of his nightshirt.

"And you're Monsieur Fauchelevent's guest," she said. 

"I suppose I must be," Javert retorted, although this was the first time he had considered himself a guest, and the first time he had heard that familiar name applied to Valjean. 

"May I sit?" he asked, feeling slow in the mind, as though he were following the conversation two minutes late. He pulled back a wooden chair, leaning on it for balance. Toussaint inclined her head and he took the seat, running a self-conscious hand though the bristles of his stubble and overgrown whiskers.

The sight seemed to trigger something within the woman. Without being asked, she crossed the room and busied herself in a cupboard. As he watched, she swung the kettle onto the stove, leaving it to heat and glow over the coals. After a few minutes of this curious whirlwind, she set a tray before Javert stacked with bread, cheese, fruit and a hot mug of coffee. He plucked a tangerine from the bowl.

"How in the devil's name did you manage those stairs? " Toussaint said. "They're a sight too steep for me, and I haven't spent weeks off my feet." She frowned at him. "I would have come to help you if I'd known you were up and about. Does Monsieur know you're walking?"

This short speech was, Javert realised, the most he had heard of another person's voice since he'd woken up in Valjean's home. The words seemed to batter against him- beginning over and over, each false start and tripled syllable shredded his flesh with a new frustration.He shook his head, as though that would answer all of the questions at once, and shuddered at the pressure of sound and a sticky wetness in his palm. He grunted in surprise. Looking down, he saw that his thumbnail had pierced the orange. His whole thumb had forced its way through the skin and into the flesh beneath. He wrenched it free, shocked at the sight of the dark burrow left by his thumb. 

"I must speak with Monsieur Fauchelevent," he said. "How does he spend his days?"

Toussaint exhaled through her nose and pursed her lips in obvious disapproval. Javert watched with interest, and could not resist another question. "Why are the shutters closed upstairs?"

Silence. So she did not wish to share her employer's secrets with a stranger - albeit one who she had shared a roof with for some weeks now - and Javert could not fault her for that. Let Valjean answer his own questions, then. 

"I can see why he keeps you here," he said. "He'll be glad of your loyalty. But at least tell me where I can find him."

She nudged the plate of food towards him. "He'll be home shortly. For now, eat."

And so he ate. And he had spent his first full hour out of bed, first discovering the stunning, faded parlour that lay behind the closed, downstairs door. Like much of the rest of the house, it too was shuttered down, and in the twilight he could see the illuminated dust motes that had been disturbed by his entrance. In the corner, a dainty table stood beside a chaise lounge, bearing a glass bowl of boiled sweets. How long could it have been since a person last visited this room? He could hardly imagine.

"He doesn't use the front rooms of the house," Javeert observed out loud, more to gauge Toussaints reaction than as a true question. Toussaint simply shrugged and offered an arm to lean on.

He spent a little more time exploring Valjean's garden. Toussaint followed him outside, keeping a wary eye on his footing as he prodded the cane into the soil before attempting each step. The grass was treacherous, wriggling damp between his bare toes and reaching almost up to his ankles, and for a strange and spinning moment, he imagined it creeping up to wind about his legs, dragging him beneath as he had imagined himself beneath the black waters of the Seine. He shuddered.

"You don't like it?" Toussaint watched him closely, quick to correct any perceived criticism of Valjean. She half reminded Javert of the would-be acolytes Valjean had attracted in Montreuil sur Mer - suspicious and protected and unflinchingly devoted to their flawed Father Madeleine. He hummed under his breath. 

"I like it as well as anyone could expect me to."

She didn't question the statement, so he didn't bother to explain. Instead he cast his eye over the crawling nightmare of vines that had swallowed up the locked gates. Of course Valjean would live in such a place, the thought came unbidden. The garden was chaos and camoflage all at once, with danger threatening every step. Of course Valjean would live here. Of _course_.

His eye was caught by a trumpeting white flower, nestled in a hedge that had once been cultivated. He took a step forward, drawn in by its fine procelain petals and alluring shape.

"What is this flower," he asked, pointing. He did not turn to look at Toussaint. He could not tear his eyes away from the blossom.

She huffed a laugh. "That's bindweed, Monsieur. Far too much of that in this garden."

Javert's voice caught on a question, but as his eyes shifted to take in the wider image, his breath fell away. The flower was attached to a choking vine that snaked through the hedge. Pointed green leaves marked the path of the beautiful, taunting flowers, and for a dizzying moment, the vine was twined about his ankle - creeping around his forearm - 

He took an abrupt step back.

"Why is the garden so overrrun with- with-" he gestured at the weed that looked so beautiful. "Why does he not keep order?"

Toussaint shrugged unhappily, and could not answer.

The garden was too unruly - green-rotting and filled with the unceasing rustling of leaves and unseen movements. Javert could not stay outside for long, and he had no wish to sit in the curious forgotten parlour, and so he allowed Toussaint to take his arm and help him up the stairs. For the first time since he had arrived, he imagined the strange pair they must make - this round-faced little woman in her white apron and Javert, doubtless wild-haired and haggard, dressed only in his nightshirt and clutching his cane, towering over her and leaning on her arm while she leaned on the bannister..

When they returned to his room, she untucked the bed covers for him, but he waved her off with a hand. To be waited on as though he were an infant seemed - but surely Valjean had done the same, and he had allowed it? Yes, he thought irrationally, but it is _not the same_. Toussaint did not seem offended by his insistence on pulling up his own sheets and adjusting his own pillow. She found a stack of books to straighten, tutting at the sparse bedroom. 

"Monsieur thinks that all men share his tastes," she said. And then, with a crafty smile, "he thinks that because I am old I have never known any men."

Javert, not knowing how to respond to such a remark, made a noncommital sound.

"Perhaps you'd like some newspapers or betting slips? There's more things than he thinks that can be spirited into his house-" Toussaint broke off, as though she had forgotten herself. "Still, never mind all that. I might be able to find some tobacco, if you'd like?" 

Tobacco. Javert's thoughts had not strayed to his snuffbox in some time, but at the mention of tobacco he felt a distant, damning itch. The trouble with vices, he thought, was that they never truly left. A man could bury them for as long as he could bear to, but the truth would come out sooner or later- or would it? Surely Valjean himself was proof that this was not so? Enough. He shifted against the pillows. For the moment he would maintain the strange existence Valjean had arranged for him. 

"Nothing. thank you." The words were stiff, he was unpractised in their use. "I would like to sleep now. Remember to send Monsieur Fauchelevent up to see me when he returns."

He had intended to stay awake and read, but the tales that had once been stimulating - see how this foolish young fop behaves! does the author truly intend this to be believed? - had become a kind of music that now only he could hear. The roads and mountains that unfurled in his mind, which had once provoked mockery and disdain, were now paths to be walked and heights to be scaled. The princess's towering prison was no fiction, the haunted souls no illusion - he saw the stone walls rise about him, and he was borne along with the jagged symphony. The backs of his thighs ached with the proof of a day's work. His breath became shallow and he drifted through the black currents of memories better avoided.

Javert had never been a heavy sleeper, and he had grown used to waking quickly. So it was that the click of the bedroom door triggered a thumping spasm in his chest, and he stirred.

The first thing he saw was the glint of moonlight that caught the silver of Jean Valjean’s hair. He stood framed in the doorway, already half out of the room, and froze at the sound of Javert’s shifting covers. Javert heaved himself upwards in the bed and waited for his breathing to steady before speaking: "Monsieur Fauchelevent."

In the doorframe, Valjean’s shoulders slumped.

"You’ve been speaking with Toussaint," he said, turning. His clothes were loosened and Javert could see the lines engraved by irons and the lash, faint but still visible on skin spread paper-thin with age. Valjean crossed the room to take his usual place beside the bed and, sitting, drew his hand across the cane that lay propped up within arm's reach. "How long have you been able to walk? I should have been here to help you."

"I can take care of myself," Javert retorted, and then snapped his mouth shut as a crinkle of amusement creased the corners of Valjean’s eyes. "If you wish to make yourself useful, I’m in need of a pair of trousers. I’m sure your housekeeper would have preferred not to see my bare legs."

Valjean smiled again. The sight was so unexpected that Javert took a second look at him. The lines that creased Valjean’s face had surely deepened since the last time Javert had studied them. And in the darkness his skin was almost translucent.

"What have you been up to?" he wondered aloud, reaching out a hand to find Valjean’s wrist. He clasped it tight and thrilled that Valjean allowed it. Valjean was stiller than stone, eyes wide and black in the dark. "Your housekeeper does not know your name or mine. You live in this empty mansion-" Valjean’s pulse jumped beneath his hand - "Where were you this afternoon?"

Valjean reached down to pluck Javert’s fingers from his wrist, and then, as though reluctant to release him entirely, folded his hand between two of his own warm palms. "I was nowhere, Javert. I took a walk. You were sleeping when I returned." Valjean’s eyes searched his face. "You should sleep now."

Javert looked down at Valjean’s hands, as they enclosed his. The touch seemed to draw his voice away from him. "Before I came here-" he began. "That night before the barricade, you told me where to find you. You said-"

Valjean nodded. "I meant it, Javert, and you may hold me to it." He was haggard, but there was no quaver in his voice. Nothing, in fact, but a remote pride. "Once you’re recovered, I will go with you to the station. As soon as you are ready, so am I."

If Javert could have done, he would have protested. Would have explained that Valjean had misunderstood - that his obligation to the law - and Valjean's - was severed like a sliced nerve, and that if he floundered without answers, there was one certainty in his life. And that was that Jean Valjean must not return to the galleys. If he could speak, he would have spoken. But he could not even move.

Valjean opened his black hole of a mouth and laughed. It was a heartbroken hollow sound. "I am ready to go," he said again. "Perhaps I’m already gone."

Javert pulled his hand free. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came loose from his throat. Valjean’s eyes were black and through the window behind him, Javert could see that the creeping vines had reached the lattice and were blocking out the moonlight.

He woke, heart pounding in his chest. It was day.

 

In the piercing morning sunlight, Javert could have scoffed at the night's memory. And would have done, if it weren't for the folded stack of clothes that sat waiting for him on the dressing table opposite the bed.

He grunted, pulling himself upright. Most likely the clothes had come from the servant. The dream might have been unnerving, but it was no cause to overreact. He swung his legs out of the bed, leaning on his good foot as he reached for the cane. He crossed the room to the window and was not surprised to find that it was clear and unencumbered by vines, leaves or wildlife of any kind,save for a spider's web. Instinctively he brushed it away and then, a moment later, examined the hand that had swept the cobweb and wondered if he should not have left it alone. He peered down at the garden, half-disappointed to see no sign of Valjean.

He turned back to the bed, unfathomably weary. What had he expected? A part of him had hoped for some reassurance. The encounter last night had been a dream - of that he was certain - but he had seen so little of Valjean in the past few days. And what little he had seen was the Valjean who, Javert suspected, was likely already dead.

When had his perception of death shifted, he wondered. At the barricades, surely. With the sting of gunpowder in his eyes, voice drowned out by the roar of cannonfire, he counted only the dead in the Musain, himself among them. But now here he stood and there they lay, he was not so certain that he was not still a little dead. The certainties of pulse and flesh and breath had faded in his mind, leaving only questions. Was Valjean dead? And, if so, was he a kind of dead that could be reached in time?

He swung around, a little too fast, to face the dresser. Shaking out the clothes, he found a pair of trousers - too broad and too short - and a long worker's smock. They would serve. He had briefly considered remaining in bed, as the habit of spending days in bed was appealing to the damaged parts of his body, but the thought of wasting another day on slovenliness and trifles was too much for him to bear. And too many of his newfound questions were yet unanswered. Instinctively he plucked the Bible from the top of his stack of books, and headed for the bedroom door.

There was no reason, he would later tell himself, for wanting to leave the room. No reason for carrying the Bible. But still, that was what he did, and he was honest enough to own the acts if not the reasons for them.

The shutters in the hallway had been unshuttered, but it was no less unnerving for the light. He tightened his grip on the Bible, hoping perhaps for guidance. But the book, which had once symbolised the comfort of rules and authority, seemed now to be a maze bound in leather and paper, spinning coils of words and ideas that twisted into dead ends and left him alone in darkness. Still, he tucked it under his arm. Perhaps if he found Valjean, the man could help him make some sense of it.

His eyes rested again on Valjean's locked bedroom door, and again he knocked upon it, determined not to be denied again. There was no answer. He knocked harder, and was about to begin barking orders when, further up the corridor, the third door opened.

Toussaint poked her head out, squinted out at him, and before she could ask what he thought he was doing, he addressed her.

"I wish to see Fauchelevent."

"So you look there, of all places! You won't find him in that room."

Javert turned from the door and advanced on her. "Where is he?"

"Have you tried the garden?"

"He isn't in the garden," he said. "I have seen the garden from my window; he's not there."

The woman was immovable. She glanced over her shoulder before looking him in the eye. "Then he must be out, Monsieur. Would you like to come downstairs for something to eat?"

Javert was halfway through the terse reply that no, he had no interest in food and no time to eat, when his stomach interrupted him with a hungry gurgle. Toussaint smiled an infuriating smile, and offered an arm to help him down the stairs.

At the kitchen table, Toussaint avoided more of his questions as she cracked and whisked eggs, chopped vegetables and heated a pan. Where was Fauchelevent? She still did not know. Why was he so rarely available? It was as much a mystery to her as to anyone else. When did she expect him to return? Soon, she hoped. What did Fauchelevent keep in his room? That was surely a question for Monsieur Fauchelevent.

Javert grunted, flipping open the Bible to the page he had last come unstuck. _That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand_ \- he frowned at the words, and was still frowning when Toussaint set the omelette before him. And was frowning still when he heard her say, "monsieur! Where did you get that?"

Javert looked up at her. "From your master." It seemed an odd thing to ask. From what he knew of Valjean, he suspected the man owned a houseful of Bibles and just one wouldn't go amiss. Especially not if it was left to be studied by a sinner like Javert.

"Not the book," she was pointing to the scrap of needleworked cloth that had fallen from between the pages. Javert glanced at it, as if seeing its detail for the first time. It had not seemed to be much of anything when he first plucked it from the drawer, but looking at it again he could not help but shudder at the open white mouths of the bindweed flowers, perfectly stitched. He picked the thing up between thumb and forefinger.

"This? It was in a drawer in my room."

She was looking at the cloth with a furrowed brow that seemed to hint at a pained fondness.

"It's mine," she said. "May I have it?"

Javert shrugged, handing it over. "I notice it isn't finished," he said, watching her turn the thing carefully over in her hand, running the flat of her thumb over the worked stitches at the back.

"No," she said. Her voice sounded distant. She folded the cloth and shoved it into a hidden pocket of her apron. "Let me know if you need anything," she said, and wa up and away more quickly than he would have imagined she could move.

He frowned at the Bible for as long as he could bear, and then a little longer. Finally, satisfied that he was making no progress, he set it aside, and looked up. The back door was swinging open, and he stared through it, tracing the garden with his eyes. And after some time watching the shifting shapes of the branches and foliage, he realised the garden must have been larger than he had first assumed. 

Madness, surely. But then, of course Valjean would have a garden seeded with lost corners and hidden mysteries. And of course they were the kind of secrets that Javert would miss at first - and would be drawn to once he saw what he had missed.

Thosee bushes that he had thought might mark the garden's edge! In fact, he saw now that they merely sectioned off and concealed another corner. The path that he could barely make out through overgrown grass wound sideways behind a tree - and what possible reason, Javert asked himself, could a path have for turning into a wall? None indeed. The garden was broader than it seemed. The positioning of statues and gates was a deliberate misdirection. He stood, steeling himself; and, leaving his half-eaten omelette and open Bible on the table, he reached for his cane.

He stepped into the garden with less surety than he had felt before, torn between an instinctive wariness and a sharp new fury with Valjean for summoning back these old suspicious ways. If a man could change his nature as easily as Valjean had promised, how was it that Javert remained unchanged? He prodded the soft ground with his cane. Why was the path so faint when it should now be solid? And what could be done for a man on a lost course? 

On her crumbled marble pedestal, the moulding statue regarded Javert with mournful dignity. She had lost an arm at some point, and her chilly stone gaze took him in along with the rotten branches on the ground and overgrown nettle beds. Javert took a moment to stare back up, his eye drawn to the parts that were ruined or lost. Where he might once have mourned the destruction of something great and long-lived, a part of him warmed at the sight. Why should a thing as old and immovable as stone be a lost cause? Perhaps there was some hope in destruction.

At the foot of the statue, the long grass shone with dew, sprouted with the sickly yellow of dandelions and buttercups. Not for the first time, Javert wondered how Valjean could stand to be surrounded by such undisciplined vegetation. The lawn, uneven and dotted with strange flowers. The nettles and dock leaves that sprouted beneath the overgrown bushes. The garden was a wild, terrifying thing - half deliberate deception and half abandoned wreckage: man and nature conspiring to form a place where nothing was as it should be. 

An unbidden thought came to mind: in some previous life Jean Valjean had been a pruner. Surely he might take some pleasure in repairing this once-proud place? He resolved to make the suggestion. Javert himself knew nothing of the business, but he had hands and arms that could be of use. A vision, sweet and mortifying, came to him: Valjean kneeling at the foot of the statue, perfecting the soft grass, identifying the unwanted leaves as he might sort sheep from goats. Javert at his side, uprooting the weeds and planting flowers in their place. The thought was a comfort.

The thought was foolish. When was the last time he had even seen Valjean - for certain and in the flesh, not in a moonlit half-dream or through a window? Valjean kept to himself - Valjean did not want his help or his company - Valjean, indeed, might not be alive.

The thought came suddenly. What if Valjean was not dead, but was in fact _dead_? It was foolish, of course, based on little more than a strange dream and a few empty days. It was, he realised with angry heat, the childish fear of the child Javert had never been. Some red-faced cherub left untended by his mother for an hour too long: _perhaps I am an orphan_! Ridiculous. Valjean was perhaps not fully alive, but he must not be dead.

Either way, he wanted nothing to do with Javert. If the man had any use for Javert, he had kept that need well hidden, Javert thought. And the prickling bitterness that accompanied the thought was not pleasant, but it was more easily ignored.

Javert made his way back to the path, taking careful steps and feeling for the guiding pebbles with his cane. As he had suspected, it seemed to make for the garden gate befoe veering off into a thicket of trees. Indeed, he was following the path so closely that he almost walked face first into the rough trunk of an old chestnut tree. 

"Well of course," he said to himself. "Why shouldn't a path walk into a tree? That is perfectly sensible. Why shouldn't a path lead me into a tree?" Stepping around the tree was no easy feat. The trees huddled close, obstructing a dark shaded corner. Javert huffed, pushing branches aside and taking care not to trip over the trees' thick roots. 

"Why shouldn't a gardener neglect his garden? Why should anyone expect a man to be found in his own home? It is foolishness to even ask. The world is mad and we accept it - why not? Why should anything be as it ought to?"

He squeezed himself between two trunks with some difficulty, before heaving forward and forcing himself hard and fast enough that he crashed through to the other side, landing on his wounded knee. 

For a moment he was paralysed; torn in pieces; blinded by a red crack of pain. And then there was throbbing horror as the world ebbed in, but his senses did not all follow. He tried his leg and it would not move. He tried his throat and it would not scream.

A few feet away, the grass had been uprooted from beneath bya mole. He stared, breathing hard, at the eruption of loosened soil, seeing nothing but this chaos that some other intruder had caused. Valjean's quet lawn and quiet life, disrupted twice over.

He could not lift up and could not stand. His breath came in short and inhuman drags of air, and if he could have raised his arms to cover his face he would have done so. Instead, he flattened himself in the dirt and dewey grass, exhausted beyond measure and infuriated by his own stupidity. The grass was just as unkempt behind the row of trees, but it was a softer, darker green. The blades of grass tickled his face and bare forearms, soft and sprinkled wet, and the gentleness was an insult in itself. He choked on an unwanted sob, half of pain and half despair, and then finally, with effort, scrubbed a savage hand over his face. 

When he angled his head, he saw the wall. And when he stared long enough for his eyes to focus, he saw that there was more than one wall. With immense effort, he raised himself to one elbow. And there it was: the tall wall that hid the garden, and behind it -before Javert - the smaller grey stone building, concealed behind the wall of trees. A servant's quarters, he assumed. The old woman must live somewhere, after all.

Struggling upwards, he forced himself to sit. Another wave of pain tore through his leg.

For all of his effort to reach the shade, it did not seem to be worth the visit. There was some shelter from the harsh sunlight, yes, but nothing that could answer his questions - nothing that would solve the riddle of Valjean's empty house. Frustrated, he moved to stand, and in shifting his weight he set a searing brand of fire up his leg. He fell forward onto his good knee, and despite what little pride he had left, he could not stifle his howl.

The pain did not let up, and he thought for a moment that he would die for want of air - which he swallowed in helpless gasps. Air that never seemed to be enough to cool the wrenching agony of a bone not yet healed or a muscle still torn. He dragged himself forward, knowing he could never make it back through the row of trees, knowing that his only hope was the servant's hut - and knowing just as well that the only servant he knew of was still in the house. He forced his way ahead, dragging himself on one leg and one arm, to bang with both fists against a wooden door he knew would be locked. He shouted, with what voice he had left, for aid, knowing that aid would not come. And when he had pounded his fists to bruising and the door did not open, the pain became too much and he slipped away.

 

He woke twice. Once, as he was being carried back from the garden, hoisted in the arms of the man who had borne the weight of fallen masonry, raised a wooden cart, and who could easily lift another man. He was cradled in both arms and carried into the light. The back of Valjean's neck was pink and warm with sweat, and with his free hand, Javert reached up to feel the solid truth of Valjean's pulse. And then he faded backwards.

The second time he woke, it was night again and Valjean was at his bedside once more, that white head once more bowed in prayer. The Bible lay open between them, pages open at the same page as they had been left on the kitchen table: _And he said unto them, Know ye not this parable?_

"You carried me up here," Javert said, with wonder, a hand reaching out to palm the back of Valjean's bowed head.

"I did," Valjean did not look up, nor move to remove Javert's hand, and so Javert did not remove it either, moving instead to caress the white hair beneath his hand, insisting with his touch on gestures that he could not yet find the words for.

"My leg has been rebandaged."

"You must take more care." 

Still Valjean's head was bowed, and Javert dared to travel lower, to trace the exposed nape of Valjean's neck, where the skin was not pink or warm. In the moonlight, it washed white, and Javert could feel the rough marks against his fingertips, mottled and carved by twenty years in an iron collar. "Do you feel this?"

"No," Valjean's voice was thick and exhausted, muffled by the bed linens. Javert reached for his scarred wrists - "do you feel this?"

"No," Valjean said into the linen. His shoulders were trembling.

"I feel you, Valjean," Javert said. "I do not believe that you are dead."

Valjean made a low, pained noise in the darkness, and Javert traced the numbed flesh of his wrist with a thoughtful finger. Throughout the day, he had imagined so many questions for Valjean, but only one came to mind at that moment. "Why is your garden overgrown? Why don't you pull the weeds or tend your lawn?"

Valjean's shoulders shook silently once more beneath Javert's gaze. He said, "because the garden is not mine to tend." And then his shoulders were shifting and his head was raising up. He looked up into Javert's eyes, and then the room was black.

When Javert woke, it was morning and he was alone.

 

There was no doubt about the matter: Jean Valjean was dead. The stammering housekeeper would not admit to her grief - her duties, it seemed, were to attend to Javert's needs and refuse his questions. 

Walking was harder after the fall. For five days, Javert did not leave his bed. And, finding that he was not interrupted or required, he stayed in his room another day after that, letting his door lie unopened, as the slightest touch was still enough to spark throbbing reminders of the past week's pain. Two nights before, he had woken to the sound of soul-wrenched sobbing, but he could not tell in the darkness whether the cries were Toussaint's or Valjean's or his own.

On the sixth day he stomped the perimeter of his room, armed with his cane and his one good foot. He opened the wardrobe and still found that there were not enough clothes. He reached the dressing table and opened each drawer in turn, digging through a nest of accumulated junk: an old notepad scribbled with what seemed to be an indecipherable shopping list, a child's discarded spinning top, a corked glass vial filled with a clear liquid. No answers.

He did not look through the window as he passed. He would not even turn his head.

The next day - although by this point the days had blurred into a single grey smudge - he reread the parables that he had still not deciphered. He lay beneath his linens and watched the journey of the light across the ceiling, and he wondered whether this was Valjean's notion of mercy - to bring a man from the brink of death and then to leave him to flounder, neither dead nor alive. Such thoughts had once been beneath him, but such thoughts had never been necessary in the past. 

Perhaps the silent house was a kindness. Since the night of the barricades, Javert's world had split open. Each choice, which had once been pre-ordained and long ago decided on his behalf, had become unpredictable. His options fanned before him like a conjuring deck, and each choice held a nest of traps and pitfalls. In leaving him alone, was Valjean doing him a kindness? With his choices narrowed to simple tasks once nore - shall I get out of bed? will I try the locked door? should I wander that wretched garden? - he could spend his days safe in the knowledge that no other soul would suffer by his actions; that his choice could not be the instrument of injustice.

Still, where was Valjean? How many tasks must an old fugitive spend his days attending to? And, for the matter, how long could an old policeman lie idle in bed? It was disgraceful. Enough books and thoughts. Enough questions with no hope of answers. Javert hoisted himself upright.

Outside his bedroom, the windows were shuttered tight once more, dust particles dancing through the few shafts of light that escaped into the dim corridor. Javert began the long walk towards the stairs, bare feet shuffling against the wood as the cane tapped out its announcement. A part of him straightened at the insistent rapping of the cane. It had an ominous right, that he might once have used to strike fear in the hearts of criminals. A shame that his only company of late had been an infuriating old adversary and his tight-lipped housekeeper.

But what was this? Valjean's bedroom door was off its latch. Javert took a hesitant step in its direction, wondering if perhaps this was a trap - as if, perhaps, he was being observed and his performance ranked. There was no question that to invade a man's privacy was no small thing. But this man? This Jean Valjean who was, perhaps, already dead? Who perhaps might still be saved? There was no question. Javert swung open the door to the master bedroom.

He saw his error the moment the door was open. He could almost have laughed. The room was not Valjean's. 

Javert had not forgotten the whispers about Monsieur Madeleine's grotto from Montreuil - and the resulting rumours about its disappointing reality. If this, he thought, were Valjean's room, then the rumoured 'grotto' would not have approached it for perversity. It was pink. It was draped with tapestries and papered with patterns and hand-painted - with a loving but not exceptionally talented hand - with ink splotches representing birds and flowers and small animals. The bed was canopied with a fine velvet curtain, and in pride of place sat a large child's doll.

Forgetting himself, he stomped forward. Taking the doll by its arm, as though it were a wanted criminal, he hauled it up, squinting hard enough into its eyes that he did not hear the thudding _splosh_ of a bucket dropped to the floor.

"You! You should not be here!"

Javert looked up, and, seeing that there was no other answer, said simply, "but here I am." And added, a little too late. "I apologise, but-"

Toussaint waved a hand. Her eyes were on the doll. "She was Madameoiselle's favourite," she said. "That beautiful, clever girl. The girl I helped to raise. Left her doll here along with her father, and never comes back to visit."

Toussaint clutched the doorframe with one hand, as though it were the only thing supporting her. "He stopped visiting her too," she said. "They're as bad as each other, the two of them. They see me and they smile and they think I've no idea." Her face was a furious red. The hair at the back of Javert's neck was prickling, alert and determined to finally understand.

"What does he need?" he demanded. "Where is he?"

"And neither of them will tell me why!" she continued, distraught and hardly hearing him. He itched to grab her by the shoulder, but instead merely tightened his grip on the doll as she continued. "Stubborn, they are. Stubborn and foolish, the two of them. He won't be with us much longer at this rate, and he expects me to make believe that all is well. As though I wouldn't notice how thin he's grown - how much he sleeps and how little he eats." She drew a shaky breath. "The loss will do him in, no question." 

The words struck Javert, reverberated through him as though he were a hollow, echoing thing. He looked down at the doll in his hands. It was extravagantly large for a small girl, and yet almost familiar. "Of course," he said, tracing the features of the doll’s porcelain face with the pad of his thumb. "He mentioned a daughter before I left him. I did not believe him - or perhaps I did by that point, I cannot tell anymore-" The doll’s dress was a fine crinoline, stitched with red trim. "He had a little girl for a few months, I thought-" He laughed, horrified at his own words, but unable to deny the truth of the matter. "I thought she served as a kind of prop." He looked up, met Toussaint’s stunned expression. "Come. I’ve waited long enough. I must speak with him."

The poor woman was torn. Javert watched as she wavered between her word, and her conscience.

"I swear, this is no betrayal," Javert's voice rang frantic in his ears. "Valjean has saved my life twice already, perhaps even a third time. If his situation is as serious as you believe, you must allow me to repay him."

"That name again," she said softly. Meeting his eyes, she stepped forward. "I don’t know how you know Monsieur Fauchelevent, or your history. But know this: if you dare to harm him, you will regret it."

"More than you could imagine," Javert agreed, his mouth set in a familiar grim line. "Now, out with it. Where is he?"

She shook her head. "Try his rooms, out in the garden. He keeps them locked up, but-" she stared at him for a moments, and then she nodded to herself. Reaching down, she unhooked a key from the jangling chain at her belt and handed it to Javert. "Monsieur, you must understand. He is a stubborn, selfish man. But he thinks he is doing the right thing for his daughter. Please try to convince him that he isn't."

The key was ice cold and fit squarely in the palm of Javert's hand. He had never known a person to convince Jean Valjean that he was wrong, and in this shrinking moment he felt least unqualified of all to make the attempt. He nodded, turned on his heel, and set off down the stairs at a brisk, hunted pace. In his mind, he outlined the route through the garden to the small outhouse that he had imagined to be a servant's rooms. He shuddered, remembering the difficulty of pushing through the barrier of trees in his condition. It would be worse a second time, with the second fall still echoing with each step. Surely there was another entrance in that nightmare of a garden. There was no way that a man of Valjean's age could easily get through those small spaces. There must have been another entrance. There must have been-

The kitchen door was already open and Javert had half stepped outside when he saw the pale figure on the stone bench. He almost stumbled, and when he righted himself, he doubled his pace, stumbling through sinking mud and wrenching his leg when he landed too hard on the wrong foot. By the time he took his place on the bench beside Valjean, he was shaking. 

Valjean turned to look at him, his skin drawn tight and laced through with raw lines.

Confronted, at last, with the sight of Valjean in the daylight, in the flesh, Javert was momentarily stunned into silence. A part of him wished desperately to take Valjean's rough hand in his own, but instead he sat in silence. Valjean did not speak. They breathed in cruel tandem, and Javert thought: how dare he breathe when he has no need? How dare he be warm when I know that he is not?

Instead he said, "the last time I was in this garden, I saw a molehill."

Valjean made a quiet, thoughtful sound. "They're solidary little things, moles. Made for dark, lonely places. I'm not surprised it was drawn to this garden." His voice, distant and mournful, was quieter even than Javert remembered.

He was not built for this. He was not a man to listen to self-pity - he despised it in himself as much as in anyone else. He slammed to his feet. "Enough! I have listened to you - or to your ghost or to you-who-is-a-ghost or whoever you may be - I have heard it all! You are lonely, you do not read, you do not garden. What do you expect to come of it? You say it is not your garden - I tell you that it is and that you should enjoy it. You have a mole? Be rid of it! Or accept it if you will, but then tell yourself: here. This is my garden and this is my garden's mole. And these are my garden's weeds. Or leave the mole and weed the garden. Or leave the weeds but drive away the mole! Or- you understand my point, I hope. There is no need for this _misery_."

He was quite out of breath, and when he looked up, he saw that Valjean was watching him with a curious expression.

"I know," he said simply, "that there is more to your problem than weeds and moles. I do not understand it, but I can guess a little of it." _I know what it is to be what you are_ , he thought, but he did not say it aloud, because he was not so certain what Valjean was. Instead: "Please, Valjean. I am a simple man. What do you think God wishes for you? A beautiful garden choked with weeds? Then so be it. But I have done some reading during my time here, and I do not believe that God wishes that for you."

Valjean seemed to listen, his hard-worn features set in an unhappy expression. His eyes seemed to be focused on something a long way in the distance.

"I should have spent more time with you," Valjean said. "You must forgive me, Javert."

"And now I, of all people, am to forgive you." Javert's voice wavered. He reached for Valjean, but thought better of it and let his hand fall without touching. "Will you at least tell me that you are not dead?"

Valjean stood and Javert stumbled to his feet after him, no kind of mirror and a poor excuse for a shadow. So be he, he thought wildly. He had pursued enough. Perhaps now it was time to follow. Valjean met his eyes and silently shook his head but still he took Javert's hands in his own, and Javert thought: you lie, you lie with every false beat of your pulse. 

"Will you say it?" he demanded.

Valjean shook his head, but would not speak.

"What about your daughter?"

"She chose to live, as you did." Valjean's grip weakened, and Javert wanted to scream that he had made no choice -or, indeed, that his choice had been death and that choice had been snatched from him by none other than a dead man. 

Javert dropped his hands, and watched without pleasure when Valjean's expression shifted into something pained. He almost as though he had been struck. "I have been looking for you for some time," Javert said.

"You'll find me in my little house," Valjean told him. "Go around to the right of the statue. The path is not always so easy to find." He indicated a patch of grass - only grass to the naked eye. Perhaps a shade darker than the rest. But when Javert brought down his cane, he hit a cobble. He glanced at Valjean.

"Nothing is ever easy with you," he said, and through his anger he could not deny the rising tide of fearful grief. "Valjean," he said. Valjean watched him, too wary for Javert's taste, but he softened as Javert stepped closer and tilted his head obligingly when Javert touched a finger to his breathless lips. He wondered if Valjean felt the touch, but could not ask. Beneath his feet the ground was uneven.

Javert leaned forward and his lips were clumsy, his hands clutched, unpracticed, at the battered shirt - the first part of Valjean they could reach. Valjean simply opened his mouth and hummed mournfully under Javert's lips. 

Javert pulled back after a little longer than he intended, reeling with sorrow and powerless venom. "That was not worth the wait," he wanted to say. But instead he said, again, "Valjean. Valjean."

Valjean turned before Javert could say more, and began to trudge back to the stone bench.

Javert turned too and made for the statue, heart pounding and furious with foolish men and the unjust world. As Valjean had promised, the unseen path twisted around the back of the statue, wound into the copse of trees, and for once, too late, Javert knew himself to be welcome and invited at Valjean's door. He laid a hand on the cold door handle, ears roaring with the his own living pulse. He dared to glance through the trees, seeking out the place that they had sat together, dreading the inevitable sight of the empty bench. He could not bring himself to look too carefully, for fear that Valjean might still be there and for fear that he might not.

He tore his eyes back to the door and knew beyond doubt that Valjean was within. The small key was still cold in the centre of his palm. His hand was on the handle. The key was in his hand. The shadow cast by the trees grew dark and terrifying, and Javert could not bring himself to unlock the door.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jamvert for les mis trick or treat.


End file.
